A THOUSAND WORDS - Alex Waterhouse-Hayward's blog on pictures, plants, politics and whatever else is on his mind.

Murray Newman - Smart Fish - R.I.P.

Monday, March 21, 2016

Former Vancouver Aquarium Director Murray Newman died on Friday. Below you will find his Vancouver Sun obituary. In the past I have inserted links to Vancouver Sun obituaries to find that a couple of years later the links are gone. So I will hope not to be sued for copyright for placing the obit below.

I photographed Murray Newman in the early 80s for Harvey Southam's Equity Magazine. I have forgotten my conversation with Newman during our shoot. I remember he was a tall and gentle man with a soothing voice. His favourite aquarium creature was the octopus but it did not volunteer to be cooperative for our photographic session. I chose to shoot through a large fish tank so there were some focus problems plus the fish would not be at the right place so I had to shoot many shots before I got four.

I have not been to the aquarium in some years knowing that any day now someone will determine that the lovely and funny sea otters are very smart and that they should not be kept in captivity.

As a little boy I often was taken to the Buenos Aires Zoo. I did not know then that I shared with Jorge Luís Borges a fascination for tigers. While I will never write wonderful poems about them I know that the world would not be a better place if Borges had not seen those caged tigers and we would not have those beautiful poems about them.

I am proud to write here that I made sure that my older granddaughter Rebecca (now18) when young had the chance to see a killer whale. I made sure we sat in the front knowing that sooner or later we would be thoroughly drenched by the animal.

I have second thoughts on all of this. I remember fondly seeing those penguins in Stanley Park and I miss seeing them. A few years ago my Rosemary, Rebecca and I visited the Morelia, Mexico zoo. There was a large field that contained two giraffes and a few Australian ostriches. The giraffes decided to run after each other. We were mesmerized by their slow-motion elegance. But then we were severely upset by watching a racoon in a small cage pace back and forth.

In at least two William Gibson novels a boy tells his father upon entering a mall, "Look dad, that's a stuffed horse." It is only a matter of time before polo, horse racing, etc will be banned. Until then I will dream about tigers.

VANCOUVER — Murray Newman wasn’t a religious man, but he had
a near-holy reverence for the world beneath ocean’s waves.

Newman, the founding director of the Vancouver Aquarium,
died Friday afternoon in Burnaby Hospital after having a stroke at home. He was
92.

“He was basically part fish,” said granddaughter Michi
Hayashi, whose most treasured memories of Newman are of snorkelling together in
Hawaii.

“I always thought a nice analogy of him was that the ocean
was like his cathedral … and the aquarium was like a temple.”

A Second World War veteran who served with both the U.S.
marines and the U.S. navy in the South Pacific, Newman spent 37 years as the
director of the Vancouver Aquarium before his retirement in 1993.

His death last week came as a surprise to the family because
his health had been good.

His vision had suffered because of macular degeneration, but
Hayashi said Newman still went for a walk in the forest every morning.

“We’re still a bit in shock,” Hayashi said. “Because of the
person he was, you just think he’s invincible and that it couldn’t happen to
him.”

Those who knew him well remember Newman as an urbane,
gentlemanly character with a dark sense of humour.

“Everybody knows that he was the smartest man in the room,
the wittiest and the most charming,” Hayashi said.

Newman was born and raised in Chicago, and studied zoology
in his hometown and at the University of California at Berkeley. After wrapping
up his master’s thesis on the social behaviour of trout, he took a job as
museum zoologist at UCLA.

That’s where he met his wife Katherine, then a biology
student with a stubborn, feminist streak.

She told the Vancouver Sun, she had been warned against
registering for a fish biology course offered by a professor who didn’t like
teaching women. Undeterred, Katherine enrolled as the only female student and
soon became close with the professor’s assistant: Murray Newman.

“We were alike in many ways and we got along. We liked each
other and we talked about things, and we had some good arguments, naturally,”
she said. “It was a good marriage and I’m going to miss him terribly.”

The couple moved to Vancouver in 1953, when Murray Newman
became the first recipient of the H.R. MacMillan Fellowship in fisheries at
UBC. He earned his PhD under William Hoar, one of the founding directors of the
Vancouver Aquarium, and was offered the job of director in 1955, before the
facility had been completed.

His successor as director of the Vancouver Aquarium, John
Nightingale, credits Newman with pushing the boundaries of what an aquarium
could be by championing a focus on research and conservation that was virtually
unheard of when the facility opened in 1956.

“Back then, aquariums were a little more like fish
menageries, and he envisioned something that was like a world centre of ocean
science,” Nightingale said. “It’s an amazing legacy.”

Newman’s fascination with the Canadian Arctic inspired some
of the first field expeditions to the far North and a research program that
continues today.

He also helped change how people viewed killer whales by
bringing a wounded orca named Moby Doll to live in Vancouver Harbour in 1964.
It was one of the first of its species to be captured and displayed publicly,
garnering attention from around the world.

The original idea had been to kill a whale, according to
Patrick McGeer, a professor emeritus in medicine at UBC, to provide a model for
a stutue for the new aquarium.

“Murray’s idea was to make a statue of a killer whale
because they were then the most feared beast in the world,” McGeer said.

“Instead it was harpooned through the nape of the neck,” he
said. Newman then decided the whale should be brought to Vancouver.

The whale captivated the public during its short life in
Vancouver, inspiring admiration rather than hatred, and gave researchers a
chance to study an orca up close, discovering through trial and error what the
whale ate.

Now McGeer believes Newman deserves his own statue at the
Vancouver Aquarium.

“He was a marvelous person. He had a rare gift of defining
worthy objectives and getting people to help him carry them out,” McGeer said.

Newman has received numerous honours for his work, including
the Canadian Centennial Medal in 1967, the Order of Canada in 1979 and the
Order of B.C. in 2006.

Three years ago, several of his awards, along with some
military medals, were stolen during a break-in at his West Vancouver home. But
after the theft was reported in the media, the medals were returned.

That, according to his granddaughter, was a typically
fortunate turn in Newman’s life.

“He just had good luck like that,” Hayashi said.

The family will hold a celebration of life for Newman
sometime next week